Old Spies, or Mr Finch Goes To Tea
by Haiza Tyri
Summary: After Root, Harold Finch ventures to England to visit with Brian Pond (i.e. Williams) about a mutual friend. A triple crossover (with the George Smiley series) and a sequel to my story "Interlude Before The Angels."
1. Green Tea

_Green Tea_

One day a man calling himself Harold Sparrow took a plane from New York City to London.

The flight attendant saw him coming down the walkway, slow, stiff, limping, dressed painfully neatly, pulling an equally neat carryon and carrying an equally neat laptop case. His hair stood straight up on his round head in a way that was also very neat, and very odd. She helped him find his seat in first class and insisted on lifting up his carryon for him, because he obviously couldn't do it himself, though he stubbornly tried. It was her job, she told him.

He sat down in his seat, buckled immediately, leaned his head back against the headrest, and wrapped his hands around the armrests.

"Is this your first time flying, sir?"

He gave her a surprised look. "No."

* * *

It was his first time flying since Root, since Nathan, since his own death. It was his first time trusting his being to the uncertain protection of a metal box flying through the air since the world had demonstrated to him that it really was as unsafe as he'd always thought it. _There was a wooden box,_ he said to himself. But that box was _alive_ and knew how to take care of her passengers.

As soon as he was allowed, he leaned his seat back into its fully recumbent position (the advantages of flying first class), fitted on his sleep mask, put in his earplugs, wrapped his hands around the armrests again, and tried very hard to pretend he was back at home in his own bed in his own library.

Reese had offered to let him bring Bear, and he'd said sarcastically, "Why? So he can tear the arms off the stewardess when she tries to give me an orange juice?"

"They call them flight attendants now, Finch."

* * *

The flight attendant took a sympathetic look at the petrified little man in 1A but let him deal with his phobias in his own way. He obviously knew how to deal with them. She might have tried to reassure him with all the old chestnuts, about flying being safer than driving a car, but he looked like an accountant, which meant he probably knew all the statistics and hadn't found them reassuring. And maybe he was afraid of driving, too.

* * *

He woke up with a panicked start, in silence and darkness, not sure where he was or what he was lying on. Where had she taken him now? He couldn't even remember her drugging him again. Then his bed gave a shuddering lurch that sent a spike of pain down his spine but was ultimately reassuring. Turbulence. Airplane. Root was long gone. He'd been awakened by his phone vibrating in his breast pocket.

Finch removed his earplugs and sleep mask, returned his seat to upright (slowly, hiding his groan), and pulled out his laptop. His phone had given him the Machine's code for a new number. He didn't have to be in his library to decode it. The collection was electronically catalogued, after all.

"Are you alright, sir?"

He looked up at the flight attendant blankly. "Sorry?"

"You looked like you were in pain. Can I get you anything?"

"No, thank you. Just an old back injury. Flying doesn't help at all, but I have prescriptions, if I need."

She smiled at him. "I'm sorry about that. Nice as these seats are, they're not like being at home."

"No."

"How did you hurt it?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Playing football."

She laughed. "Sorry. I'm nosy. Too interested in people. Would you like anything to drink? We have champagne, wine, beer, juice, soda, coffee, tea (green and black)—"

"Green tea, please." It would probably be some revolting twigs from a bag in a styrofoam cup, which never improved the flavor, but he could use something hot. "Two sugars."

"Right away." She smiled again.

Finch set his program to glean the numbers and turned to his file on Cassidy Murphy. That was the flight attendant's name. He had no particular interest in her, but when he bought his tickets he'd made a complete dossier of all the pilots, crew, and ground crew of the flight he was taking. Then, for good measure, he'd looked into the other passengers.

"You're paranoid," Reese had observed.

"I'm alive, too."

Cassidy Murphy was a perfectly ordinary young woman of twenty-nine. Healthy, not terribly pretty nor terribly plain, a wide smile that enlivened her face, red-brown hair, no connection to Irish mob. Unmarried, with a three-year-old daughter she had to leave with her sister in New Jersey when she was working. A difficult way for a mother to live. But perfectly ordinary. He didn't need to worry about her.

* * *

Cassidy Murphy opened her purse and pulled out the packet, unwrapped one of the pyramid-shaped little sachets, admired the long, flat, green leaves inside, and poured boiling water over it into the china cup they gave first class passengers. She put it with its saucer on a tray with two sugars and a little spoon, added a small plate of biscuits, and carried it out to Mr. Sparrow, who looked pleasantly surprised.

This particular airline had never served green tea.


	2. White Tea

_White Tea_

Finch spent the rest of the flight talking Reese through rescuing a banker from suicide and had the case closed by the time he landed in London. It was a very welcome diversion. Reese in the banking world was exactly like Reese on Wall Street, but Finch would never know precisely what he said to the banker to get him to put down the gun and turn himself in. Finch took a well-founded guess that it was something from his own life.

Cassidy brought him unending cups of that really excellent green tea as well as the in-flight meal, always with the same cheerful courtesy. If it had been permissible to tip a flight attendant, he would have tipped her well. She had learned her lesson and did not ask him what he was working on. For the flight he had brought a Blue Tooth, because it was always better to be obviously talking on a phone on public transportation rather than making your fellow passengers think you were a crazy guy who talked to himself. He had also brought a program that projected almost imperceptible but highly sound-masking white noise from his computer so that no one else in first class would hear him talking to his ex-CIA operative for hours on end. He was really going to have to consider buying a private plane, but that would entail keeping a private pilot, which would mean more layers upon layers of security.

Once when he interrupted a conference to say "Thank you" to Cassidy for the new cup of tea, Reese teased him about his pet "stewardess."

"What is it with women flocking to you, Finch? All the girls eventually fall for you. Root, Martha, Amy—"

"There's no _falling,_ Mr. Reese. It's the limp. They want to take care of me."

"Don't sell yourself short, Harold. Women think you're attractive. Beats me why."

"Mr. Reese, would you please stop making up ridiculous stories and turn your mind back to your work? I need you to be familiar with the basic 401K before your meeting."

He was never going to live that down. It was ridiculous, of course, and even if it were true, that would be more of a liability, when you were really trying to be a paranoid recluse because people wanted you dead and you had responsibility for vast numbers of Irrelevants. Reese should understand this, but he seemed determined to gather an entourage.

_And this is why you're traveling to England to meet a man who knew your father?_ a snarky—and very Reese-like—voice in his head asked him. He ignored it.

He did not end up dying—or being kidnapped—on the flight. Cassidy pulled down his carryon and received his thanks; he made it through customs without being arrested as a spy; and he made it to his hotel without being followed. He could probably relax. A little.

The next morning he was picked up by the private car service he had contracted with while still in New York and traveled the two hours to Gloucester. Driving in New York City was one thing, but he drew the line at driving on the opposite side of the road.

He'd emailed Brian Williams a month ago, before Root, introduced himself as a friend of his son, and asked if he could come meet with him about a mutual friend. The man's email in response had nearly trembled with eagerness, and Finch wondered if he knew about his son's death, far in the past, and if he knew, how. Did he know about the Doctor? Did he understand about Weeping Angels? He'd asked to meet in Gloucester because it was quite a large town, and he didn't want to meet anywhere his resemblance to one George Smiley might be taken note of. He didn't know if the former secret agent had been well-known or not in his chosen Cotswolds hometown of Cirencester.

He came to the café he'd arranged as a meeting place with Rory's father, Hedley's Tea and Coffee Shop (they'd had a terrible website, he'd noticed), well in advance of his time. Across the street was a bookshop, so he stepped in and, on a whim, bought a cheap, secondhand copy of _Our Mutual Friend,_ because it was there, staring at him on the shelf the moment he entered. He took it across to the coffee shop, which was housed in a beautiful timber-framed building built in the 1500s, giving him an almost oppressive sense of history as he entered and ordered a pot of tea (white tea, with orange blossoms, since he'd had enough Sencha yesterday to last anyone a lifetime). Within moments he was lost, as always, in the story of Lizzie and her two strange suitors, of John and his murky half-life, of Bella and her charming selfishness, of Eugene and his tormenting of the schoolmaster and himself, of odd little Jenny Wren and her dolls. He didn't notice the time going by, until he realized that someone had been standing and staring at him for some minutes. He looked up into wide brown eyes in a round face, belonging to a round man wearing a vest.

"You look like him," the man blurted. "How you _do_ look like him. Like you could be his son, only that's silly, 'cos he didn't have any children."

Finch closed _Our Mutual Friend_ and rose. "Please have a seat," he said courteously. "I am Harold Sparrow. You must be Brian Williams."


	3. Black Tea

_Black Tea_

Rory's father was still staring at him as he moved into a seat. He was a foolish-looking man with a kind of warmness about him, and Finch could see instantly what Rory had meant when he said he wasn't the kind of man who did anything exciting. _But neither am I. The things I have done are in spite of the kind of man I am._

"You didn't say in your email who our mutual friend was, but I can see who immediately. How you took me back!"

For a moment, still mentally absorbed in his book, he thought, _John Rokesmith?_ But he shifted his shoulders and snapped himself out of it.

"Mr. Williams—"

"Brian, please. I have so many questions. How are you related to—our…mutual friend…" His eyes had dropped down to the book on the table, and he was distracted. "How—how did you know my son? And when?"

Finch wondered what he meant by _when._ But he'd spoken in the past tense. He knew his son was dead. "I met him only a few months ago, with a young woman named Amelia."

Brian dropped his head a little with a sigh and a smile. "Amy. What a dance she led Rory on, I can tell you."

"I believe you, Mr. Williams."

"_Brian."_

"Brian…" he said unwillingly. "I didn't really know your son. I met him and spent perhaps an hour in his company. I liked him. He seemed a—a very fine young man."

"He was." Brian stared hard at his hands. "He was the finest, the truest, the steadiest." He looked up and accepted the teapot from the waitress, poured out a cup of black tea for Finch without asking if he wanted any.

"How did he die, Mr.—Brian?" He asked because he could see Brian wanted to talk about Rory and because he wanted to know if Brian knew.

"He lived himself to death," Brian murmured with a crooked smile. Then he looked up swiftly, and they examined each other with the same mental query: _Does he know?_ "Don't let's beat about the bush. If you met Rory and Amy a few months ago, you had to have met the Doctor."

"I did," Finch admitted. "I've met him several times, as a matter of fact."

Brian leaned forward eagerly. "Ever traveled with him?"

"Only from one end of New York City to the other."

"I have," he said with quiet pride, and a slow smile made his face nearly glow. "Dinosaurs," he said. "On a spaceship."

Finch stared at him.

"It was wonderful. I didn't think so at the time, but it was. Having adventures with Rory, in the blue box thingie."

"The TARDIS," Finch said quietly, and Brian peered up at him. "The TARDIS and I are…old friends," he found himself explaining.

"More than the Doctor?"

"I…identify better with machines."

"You're a computery person, aren't you."

"I—yes. Yes, I am a computery person."

"I think I'd have been, if I'd been born twenty years later than I was. Mr. Smiley, he wasn't, not by a long shot." He gave Finch a quick look. "That is him, isn't it? Our mutual friend? Relative of yours?"

"He was my father," he heard himself saying, to his own horror.

Brian slapped the table. "Well, of course he was! Just like I said. Except he didn't have any kids."

"I was adopted. By Americans. He never knew."

Comprehension went over Brian's face. "Lady Ann. I see. Yes, everyone knew about her."

To get the conversation away from his father's infamously unfaithful wife, Finch said, "Brian, Rory had a question I don't think he ever had a chance to ask you. He recognized me, too, and mentioned that you had worked with George Smiley. Under what capacity did you work with him?"

They examined each other again, asking themselves the very same question again. _Does he know?_

"Was it in the Circus?" Finch asked deliberately.

Anyone else would have given him an odd look if he'd asked them if they'd worked in a circus, but Brian slowly nodded. Yes, he'd worked in London's espionage headquarters, known inside the trade as "the Circus."

"Rory wanted to ask you this: Were you a spy?"

Brian laughed aloud, then wiped his eyes. "No. I was just a janitor. Not _that_ kind of janitor. They called us janitors in the jargon. We were sort of doorkeepers, security. Let people into the building, admit people to various secure locations, make sure nobody's left documents lying about, that sort of thing. Nobody, really. Unimportant. But he noticed me. The great Mr. Smiley, one of the old guard, the brilliant ones left over from the War. He noticed _me._ He used to be a recruiter and a nursemaid—that is, a trainer of new recruits. He noticed me because—well, because nobody notices me. He was just like that, see. It was his great genius, that nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to him. And meanwhile all along he was _seeing_ things and _hearing_ things and understanding things and making connections nobody else did. And he looked at me and thought, _Hullo, here's a chap who could be like me._ I expect I couldn't, really. Nobody had a brain like his, but nobody. And anyway, spying wasn't for me. I'm not really adventuresome or danger-loving. I can't see and hear the way you're supposed to, not like _him,_ and I'm not really nimble in my mind. I'm a bit of a plodder. Background, that's me. I do best with something to just sit down and work at until it's untangled or fixed. There were places like that in the Circus I might have been good at, of course, but I realized something. None of those men were happy. None of them had stable marriages. None of them had a family life. And I'd just got married, and we wanted kids. So I got out of there, fast. And I got a job that wasn't interesting or exciting, and I got to go home at night to my wife, and I got to walk the floor with my screaming baby son, and I got to play with him, and I was a _good_ dad. And—and maybe that was part of the reason Rory was such a true, honest, steady boy, because I was a dad and not a spy." He mopped his eyes with his napkin and snuffled into it, and Finch stared into his teacup and envied Rory.


	4. Tea

_Tea_

He didn't know how it had happened, but somehow Brian had swept him off to his own house in Leadworth for tea. The meal, not the drink. Brian had a home just like himself, quiet, unimpressive, and homey. He served shepherd's pie, cheese, bread, and ale, not tea at all. Finch had never been fond of ale, but he drank it politely. The shepherd's pie was very good.

Brian chatted about Rory and Amy, whom he seemed to have viewed as half-mad and half-enchanting, which seemed just about right. Once he said, "I wish you'd come a month ago, Harold. You could've met my grandson. Anthony, his name is, Anthony Brian. He—he was the one who brought me the news. It should have been the Doctor, but he's not been back. And it was right for Anthony to come. Would you like to see him?" He bustled up and hurried out of the kitchen, came back with a framed photograph, which he thrust into Finch's hands.

Finch looked into the faces of an older and a younger man. The younger man had his arm around the older man's shoulders and a broad smile. The older man looked a bit diffident, but pleased. Brian Williams was the younger man. Finch stared up at him.

"Yes, my grandson's older than I am. That's what happens when your kids get sent back in time to before you were born." He sighed. "He's got grandkids almost his parents' ages. So I'm a great-great grandfather, at my age! Maybe someday I'll go to America and meet them. But I'll be just a relative, not their great-great grandfather. It's strange enough for Anthony." He sighed again. "And for me."

Finch's phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out. A text: **_I'm not coming._**

He texted back, **_Yes, you are._**

**_ I can't._**

**_ Yes, you can. His children just died, and he's alone._**

When there was no response, he texted, **_Melody Pond, when I open that door, I had better find you outside it._**

He put his phone away. "Sorry about that. Brian, have you…have you ever met your granddaughter?"

"My…You mean Anthony's wife?"

"No, I mean Rory and Amelia's daughter."

"But they—Anthony never mentioned—"

"Anthony probably doesn't know about her. She was born while they were still traveling with the Doctor."

Brian's mouth trembled. "But—but—they never—"

"She was kidnapped," Finch said gently. "It was extremely traumatic for them. Sometimes you can't talk about traumatic things, not even to the people you love best. Especially to them."

Brian put his hand over his face and sobbed.

After a moment, Finch said, "Would you like to meet her?"

_"What? Yes!"_

"Wait a moment."

He got up from the table and went through the house to the front door, opened it, and sighed. No one was there. His phone vibrated.

**_ Back door, stupid._**

She sounded exactly like her mother. With another sigh, he limped back through the house and opened the kitchen door. River smiled at him, a little tremulous.

"Obeying orders, Uncle Harold."

"Don't call me Uncle Harold. I'm not your uncle."

"Shut up. Are you going to let me in?"

He stood aside, and she came inside. Brian had risen and stood staring at her.

"Hello, Granddad."


	5. Jasmine Tea

_Jasmine Tea_

Mr. Finch boarded his plane at Heathrow. River and Brian had both insisted on coming to see him off, which was awkward. He had not let Reese do that.

Grandfather and granddaughter (who was not terribly younger than he was) had got on beautifully, especially after Brian found out he had known his granddaughter in the guise of a child called Mels whom Rory and Amelia had both taken under their wings as children—which made Finch's head spin.

"I have a time-head," River said dryly. And went on to explain how being conceived in the TARDIS made her as much the daughter of the TARDIS as of Amy and Rory (_The TARDIS's daughter!_ Finch thought. No wonder she was mad and wonderful—) and how she had regenerations like a Time Lord, and how, knowing she would never be raised by her parents, she had traveled to Leadworth to be raised by her parents—as children.

At the airport she hugged Finch and kissed him, and he suppressed a sigh and thanked heaven Mr. Reese was not there to add her to his list of the women who had supposedly fallen for him. The only one who actually had Reese had not put on the list, and Finch mentally thanked him for his delicacy.

Brian hugged him too. He would never forget the look on Brian's face when he found out the Doctor was his grandson-in-law.

"River," he said quietly, "tell the Doctor he needs to come visit Brian."

"Harold, Amy and Rory's deaths broke him apart. I don't think he could bear to."

"You didn't think you could either. He has to. Brian needs him to. He needs to be done that courtesy. And maybe the Doctor needs to hear Brian tell him he doesn't blame him."

"Everyone always blames him, Harold."

He looked up at her. "Brian doesn't."

She gave a nod, kissed him again, and laughed at his face. "I'll see you soon, Uncle Harold."

"Don't—"

"Shut up."

Now he boarded his plane, and the first person he saw, to his astonishment, was Cassidy Murphy. She hadn't been on the crew list for the flight back.

"Why, Mr. Sparrow!"

(He'd considered looking up the video and bookshop in London called Sparrow & Nightingale and didn't. He'd considered searching the hospitals for a Doctor Martha Jones and didn't.)

"Miss Murphy," he greeted her.

"How nice to see you again." Once again she took charge of his carryon. "I hope you had a nice time in England."

"I did. I had a very nice time."

"I'm glad." She was, too.

He sat down and buckled, and this time he did not clutch the armrests.

* * *

Just before the plane took off, Cassidy sent a quick text. "He's aboard."

* * *

Cassidy brought him a steaming cup without even asking if he wanted it. Clear, pale green but with a sweet fragrance that took him back to his favorite Chinese restaurant.

"Jasmine tea?"

She shrugged. "It's what we have in green tea this flight. Do you mind?"

"No, I don't mind." He smiled at her.

During the whole flight, Brian's words drifted through his mind.

_I got a job that wasn't interesting or exciting, and I got to go home at night to my wife, and I got to walk the floor with my screaming baby son, and I got to play with him, and I was a _good_ dad. And—and maybe that was part of the reason Rory was such a true, honest, steady boy, because I was a dad._

He wondered whether Cassidy thought she was a good mother, or if her many separations from her child put the kind of rift between them that Brian thought he had prevented by leaving the Circus. A number had come in; he tried to concentrate on his work, but it was soon done. Carter arrested the Irrelevant within an hour of the number. He tried to do more of his taking the backbearings on Root, searching out her future by investigating her past, but he kept drifting off in thought, unusual for him. The jasmine tea kept coming.

"Miss Murphy," he said during a quiet space in the flight, "may I ask you a personal question?"

Cassidy squatted down on the floor so she wasn't towering over him. "I must say I'm surprised, Mr. Sparrow, but of course you can."

"Do you like being a flight attendant?"

Her eyebrows shot up. "Why, do I give the impression of disliking my job?"

"Not at all." He said nothing more but waited for her to answer, which she did after staring at him a moment.

"I do like it. I like…meeting different kinds of people and helping them. I took this job on a whim, after college, and didn't expect to like it so much. It's not what I always wanted to do."

"What did you want to do?"

"I wanted to start a school. It's because I always loved teaching kids to read. In high school I used to help out in a kindergarten, and my favorite part was teaching them to read. I thought I would have a daycare that's like a school, where kids don't come to be entertained but to be taught, because really little kids _do_ learn how to read, when someone cares to teach them. But now I'm a flight attendant, and my sister is teaching _my_ little girl to read." There were tears in her eyes suddenly.

"You have a child? That must be difficult."

"It is," she whispered. "Does it show?"

"No. You are a very good flight attendant. The best I've ever met."

"You don't have to say that just to make me feel better."

"I assure you, I'm not in the habit of saying things to make people feel better. I would do it badly, if I tried."

Cassidy gave an impish chuckle. "Mr. Sparrow, if it weren't against company policy, I would give you my phone number."

"Why would you do that?" he asked blankly. _Anyway, I already have it. And your address, and your social security number, and your bank account number, and your daughter's birthday and her favorite color, and I'm very glad I'm not a creepy stalker._

"So you could call me, obviously."

It took a great effort not to cover his eyes with a groan. "Perhaps it's good it's company policy. My work tends to preclude personal entanglements."

"'Tends to preclude personal entanglements'? Mr. Sparrow, are you a spy?"

"Not precisely," he said in some bemused amusement.

She laughed. "The perfect answer. But whatever your work, you can't live without personal entanglements. You've got to have—oh, at least one good friend."

"I do. A very good friend indeed." _Not a friend I intended to have. But a friend._

"I'm glad, Mr. Sparrow. Oh, look. We're coming into New York. Better prepare for landing." She took his cup away.


	6. Interlude for Coffee

_Interlude for Coffee_

Cassidy watched little Mr. Sparrow limping slowly down the passage, passed impatiently by other passengers. There was something strangely indomitable about him.

When he turned the corner, she ducked back into the galley and pulled out her cell phone. "He's just disembarked," she reported. "He's all yours, providing no one assaults him between here and the front doors."

"Thank you, Cassidy," said the voice on the phone, as low and soft as velvet. "Now, about what I promised to pay you—"

"I don't want it."

"What?"

"I don't want your money!"

She'd met him a little over a week ago, in a coffee shop where she was waiting for her sister to bring Clemmie so they could go to the zoo. Her flight had gotten in early. She was sipping a mocha and staring at the weather, praying it wouldn't rain. Clemmie loved the zoo.

"Cassidy?" said a low voice behind her.

It was a man in a suit, a very nice suit. Six years on planes had taught her about suits. He was very tall and very handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and a face that was all at once somber, intense, and mischievous.

"Do I know you?" It was only when she said the conventional phrase that it occurred to her she really might.

"We have a mutual friend."

She stared hard at him. "Who _are_ you?"

He sat down opposite her, moving easily and efficiently. "Kansas."

After a moment, she drew in a gasp. "_Jonathan?"_

"It's John, actually, and you have a good memory."

"It would be hard to forget the man who saved your best friend from a house fire, even if it was…thirteen years ago? Anyway," she laughed, "you don't forget the handsome soldier boyfriend of your best friend's older sister."

He gave a slight smirk. She could be excused for not recognizing him at first. He was like a different man, in some indefinable, psychological way. Darker and…more dangerous.

"What are you doing these days, Jonath—John?"

He smiled—darkly. "One of those I'd-have-to-kill-you-if-I-told-you things."

Why didn't that surprise her?

"I want to ask you to do something for me, Cassidy. Hire you to do something."

Her brows drew together suspiciously. "What?"

"Nothing illegal. I know you're working the flight to London in a week."

Now she was really suspicious. "It's my normal flight."

"Someone's going to be on that flight, and on the return flight three days later. I want you to take care of him."

"'Take care of him'?"

"Say it in that tone and it sounds like I've asked you to kill him. He's my friend. Sort of partner. We work together. And a couple of weeks ago, he was kidnapped."

Her eyes went wide.

"I got him back, but the person who kidnapped him got away, and he's—he's afraid. He promised a month ago to go visit someone in England, and he insists on doing it and not letting me go with him."

"Sounds like you need a bodyguard, not a flight attendant."

John laughed softly. "I have a bodyguard. He'll never know. But I want someone to…help him feel comfortable. Someone who belongs, like the furniture. I just—I want him to stop being _afraid."_

"He must be a very good friend."

"He is. He saved my life. I would—I would very definitely be dead now, if it weren't for him."

She agreed to do it. As he was leaving, he said, "Cassidy, no personal questions, alright? He's a very private person. Oh—and he likes green tea."

The airline didn't serve green tea, so she looked around the coffee shop and bought the nicest-looking green tea she could find. The man who'd saved the life of a man like the one who had just walked out was surely worth a few extra touches. She expected him to be another man like John, tall and all coiled inside like a spring. Instead he was a small, round, limping man (was he hurt in the kidnapping?), bespectacled, with an odd precision of speech and absolutely terrified of the flight. By the time he disembarked in New York again, she could see the terror was gone. She didn't flatter herself that it was all or even mostly her (or the green tea): he'd come aboard in London looking far more relaxed in himself than when he'd left. But it was partly her, and that meant she'd done her job.

"I don't want your money, John. I just did my job. I'm a very good flight attendant."

* * *

**Author's note: The bodyguard was Mr. Finch's driver in England, of course, but Cassidy didn't need to know that.**


	7. Green Tea Again

_Green Tea Again_

"So, how was Brian Pond, Finch?" Reese asked, setting a cup next to Finch's keyboard.

He stared at it with some dismay. "Thank you, John, but I think if I ever see green tea again…"

"Have you been overdosing yourself in England?"

"Not so much in England as on the flight. A very kind flight attendant gave me as much as I could drink and more."

"Now, that was sweet. Did you give her your telephone number?"

Finch glanced up at him sharply. "Why would I do that, Mr. Reese? To answer your question, Brian _Williams_ seems to be doing well, all things considered, especially once I convinced Professor Song to go see him. I have hopes she will convince the Doctor to do so as well."

"You look like you had a good time."

"I…enjoyed it." And he'd also managed to get Brian into Dickens, once he told him what _Our Mutual Friend_ was about and gave it to him. Dickens was just the writer to read when you were a month or two into grief. He should know. He'd done it.

"Well, what are you working on now?"

"I was thinking about endowing a school…"

* * *

Cassidy couldn't imagine why a lawyer would want to see her. A business lawyer, not a criminal lawyer or anything like that. She reluctantly left Clemmie with her sister and arrived at her appointment.

"I represent a wealthy client, Ms. Murphy," the lawyer said, "who wishes to remain anonymous. It is his desire to endow a school, on the sole condition that you run it. It will be completely yours."

"_Me?"_ She sat with one hand over her heart, as if she could stop it racing.

"My client said, and I quote, 'She is a very good flight attendant, so I can only imagine that she will be an even better teacher.'"

Her tears spilled over. "Oh, Mr. Sparrow."

"As I said, he wishes to remain anonymous, but he said, and I quote again, 'If she wishes to think of me as Mr. Sparrow, she is free to do so.' I can't say I understand what that means."

"It means his name's not really Mr. Sparrow," she said, laughing and crying, "which I can't say surprises me, as I think he's a spy."

He gave her a doubting raised eyebrow. "There are two conditions to this bequest, Ms. Murphy. The first is that you never try to find out who he is or contact him."

Cassidy laughed and cried some more. Somehow that didn't surprise her either. He really was a spy, he and his friend John who used to be called Jonathan. "What is the other condition?"

"That you name the school The Rory Williams School."

"Rory Williams? Who's that?"

"I have no idea. I assumed you would."

"I've never heard of him."

The lawyer frowned at his paperwork. "He was most clear."

"Obviously, whatever that means, it's important to him, and I'm willing. But _why?_ Why is he doing this? I was his _flight attendant, twice."_

The lawyer held out an envelope to her. She took it and opened it. There was a card, painfully neat and simple, nice white cardstock and a pale green border, and plainly printed words in deep blue: "Thank you." Inside, under a blue border, it said in green, "For the green tea."


	8. Epilogue: The Doctor Comes To Tea

**Author's note: This epilogue is for House Calls, my kind reviewer who requested it. It was totally unplanned, until the review inspired it.  
**

* * *

_Epilogue: The Doctor Comes To Tea_

Brian sat in his favorite chair reading. He'd been sitting in his favorite chair reading for hours, fortifying himself with cup after cup of tea. It was a very thick book, but he was a persistent man, and anyway, it was a very good book. Harold had suggested he try _Oliver Twist_ next. He'd just got to the part where Bradley Headstone was stalking Eugene Wrayburn and Eugene was leading him on a merry chase through the streets of London, to Mortimer Lightwood's increasing disquiet. He felt quite a lot of sympathy for Bradley, but Eugene amused him. Mortimer was his favorite character, though. Or maybe Jenny Wren, who reminded him, highly unexpectedly, of Harold Sparrow. Or maybe Mr. Boffin— He chuckled and read on.

There was a tap at the kitchen door. Who came to the kitchen door at this time of night? Reluctantly he put the book down and went to open it.

The Doctor stood there, leaning a long arm against the door post. He looked exactly the way Brian had felt a month ago and now, looking at him, felt welling up inside him again, like he had lost what made life worth it. He looked like a child, somehow. Well, he was Brian's grandson-in-law.

Brian put out a hand. The Doctor flinched, as if he expected Brian to strike him. He didn't expect Brian to take him by the arms and pull him forward into a warm, gentle, comforting hug. It didn't matter that this alien man was something like a thousand years older than Brian. Brian was his grandfather.

The End.


End file.
